8710w - fan works all the time

My friend have 8710w GC124EA (purchased several days ago) and have one big problem with it. Fan works all the time at full speed whatever is doing in notebook, even in idle . And it sounds like vacuum cleaner.

Notebook has Vista Business x86 and came with BIOS version is F.0B (12/2/2008), i.e. the latest one. There is no options in BIOS for controlling fan speed.

Any solution or he will sell 8710w because of problem with fan :confused2:.

 

Is it because the temperature is high?

 

No, here is around 23 Celsius .

 

So there is no option in the BIOS that reads "Fan always on while on AC power"? I know there was on the nc8430/nw8440 (the 8510p/w predecessors).

Have you tried checking the internal notebook temperatures using HWMonitor? If not, download and run HWMonitor and see what you get.

It might be a hardware issue. I recall hearing that the either the 6510b or the 6710b (might be 6515b/6715b) had the same issue with the fan, and they had to be sent back to HP. There was something wrong on the motherboard that was causing the fan to run at full speed all the time.

 

My 8710w's fans are almost silent and cool during non-intensive usage. Make sure that the computer isn't doing intensive tasks resulting in high internal temperatures (the temperature of your room or environment is not what we're talking about here) and has appropriate airflow.

 

ff-0b is not the latest f-of 5-02-08 or f-11 02-04-08 is , f-12 should be out next week

 

According to HP support site it is:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...3355679&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=2096#120

I think there is no such a option, but we'll check.

After 8710w is powered up, fan works all the time. That's why I typed it works even in idle .

That's correct and I hope it's not that. Anyway, HP support center here doesn't work for weekend. We have to wait Monday.

 

I'm the Man with fan problem!

Option Fan Always on while on AC Power is Enabled/Disabled... same result... fan is still on max rpm.

Both... environment and internal notebook temperatures are OK!

 

You're not the only one. I have the same problem.

I have F0.B -BIOS and all newest drivers from HP site, I've tried using the shipped 32bit Vista Business and 64bit Vista, the problem exists in both. Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 8/9 are free of this problem (fan seems to work normally).

I sent the laptop for warranty repair just in case if it was due to a HW problem (the fan is on and *LOUD* even when cpu and gpu load is close to nil). They changed the motherboard but it didn't have any effect on the problem.

I have a vague memory of this problem appearing right after I upgraded to F0.B the first time - so it might be an incompatibility issue between Vista and BIOS. I sure hope that there's a new bios revision due soon that fixes this issue.

 

Im going to make downgrade to XP Pro to try solve fan speed problem.
If I succeed... I'm gona let you now of course!

 

What power scheme are you guys running in? I know with Vista if you are operating @ High Performance, the fan will run at nearly full speed all the time, regardless of the intensity of your tasks. Very silly but oh well.

I operate in Power Saver mode or Balanced (which can get almost as quiet as Power Saver) 95% of the time. Only when gaming or doing hardware intensive tasks do I ever switch to High Performance.

 

I have selected the High Performance but my fan definently doesn't do that, unless I play some CPU-intense game perhaps. Hell, even my fanless external HD keeps more noise than the computer fan.

 

Mmm must be because the 8710 has more room to cool down. Although to be honest I haven't just sat in High Performance for awhile to see what happens...always hit it just before games then turn down after.

Well just sat in High Performance doing random little things for awhile and yeah, my fan is louder, but not as much as I used to think. Must be that bios update I did a long time ago

It does fluctuate quite a bit though...from GPU 45-60C my fan can change pitch 3 times. Generally seems to be...Cores are 55-60, GPU 55-65 in high performance, so my fan is definitely running more often. Full fan speed for me is 85C so it's not as high as I had thought, but noticeable.

Going back down to power saver the fan immediately cuts back two notches (GPU 45C, Cores 45-50C). I can do a bunch of stuff to try and heat things up but the highest it'll go is 50c, which is still a fairly quiet fan speed.

Doesn't help the OP though

 

Man... your post is frustrating... for me of course , because I spend couple of days trying to solve problem...
I can't downgrade to previous BIOS version...that is a bit of problem!!!
Then I've used nLite to put Intel SATA drivers into WinXP sp2 and finaly manage to install XP... but the problem is still present.

My lovely computer is now at HP's service!

Also I find there are 2 diferent codes of 8710w, my version GC124EA and GC125EA....

What is a difference... anyone?

 

Same model, GC124 has Vista preinstalled and GC125 has Windows XP.
Your fans really shouldn't be running all the time. Check that your CPU and GPU temperatures are below 55 using HWInfo.
My 8710w is silent, and when I say that, I mean it. I've had an nx8420 before so I know about these fan noise. The 8710 should not suffer from this problem as the cooling system has been redesigned to accomodate the system.

 

Yeeeeaaaaaaaaaa!
Thank you for cheering me...
Now I have hope that all could be OK at the end of this nightmare!

I've already measured my temperatures using Speed Fan and they are 30-35 Celsius!

Mine was produced two weeks ago... yours?

 

The ambient temperature is ~22 celsius in the work room

I have checked through powersaver, hp optimizzed and performance modes.

While on AC with powersave, the cores seem to hover at 50C and never go below that even on 1 hour idle on < 1% cpu and gpu load. Whatever I do (open my computer, putty or start menu), the temperature bounces immediately up to 65 even though processor load only hovers around 10%. The temperature rises almost exponentially but comes back down very slowly. The fan is constantly on the second level which is clearly audible and very annoying while working.

While on battery with powersave, the cores are 40C at idle, and the fan turns off at times, but is mostly on the lowest level. It bounces up to 60C immediately when i do any small thing and comes back very slowly.

I ran superPI to test throttling and got up to 85C almost immediately on 80% cpu load with highest fan level. It took almost 15 min for the cpu to cool down back to 50C.

This feature appears on Vista business 64/32 bit and XP Pro 32bit. The computer seems a bit quieter in Fedora and Ubuntu, but the fan never drops below 6000rpm and temps are steadily at 45-50C.

I've already once sent the computer to HP for repairs, they changed the motherboard which had no effect on the problem. I'm sending it back with more details.

It's extremely annoying that my old fujitsu amilo pro workbook (and my 8510p) only used fan on high long intense load whereas it seems even the *TINIEST* tasks get 8710W all huffing and puffing like a marathon runner and a jet engine. It's unbelievably lame. There's apparently either a BIOS/driver problem or some kind of crap inside the case they didn't notice earlier on.

 

People... everything is fine now! HP change my previous 8710w with the new one and the new one is very quiet when idle!

I'm gona try to work some time and then write few personal impressions about the noise.

Thanks for info to all of you!

 

Glad you got everything worked out! I hope all goes well with your 8710w in the future!

 

problem solved.

After an unsuccesful mobo change at HP service in germany, I called in again, and they sent ONsite support person the next day to check the laptop. He was very helpful and explained about the origins of this problem (and fixed the laptop,yay).

The problem is either in the cooling of the GPU or in the GPU memory chips in 99% of the cases. He said that 8710W has had cooling problems in the GPU, he has never had to change CPU or other parts because of this problem, changing the GPU has always solved it.

Also, I heard I had been lucky, as my model was manufactured somewhere in the end of last year. Apparently the more recent revisions of the laptop have had more cooling problems than this earlier one.

So, if you're suffering from the same symptoms as I was, remember to tell your ONsite support to check the GPU first, it might save you a whole bunch of trouble.

Big thanks for HP for extremely fast repair (the service person even changed the whole display part as the cover was slightly scratched when it came back from the german repair centre). I haven't received this good service from any pervious laptop brand.

 

we need to stress to HP that heat & fan issues are annoying and they need to be fixed. they aren't the fault of customer in these products, many copies of 8710W and 8510P have suffered from broken cooling systems and bad design.

 

8710w can come in two versions of GPU - ATi and nVidia. They both vary in temperatures by A LOT. ATi chips tend to be much cooler than nVidia, so just bear that one in mind.

 

Really? I've seen only NVIDIA-8710W's on the market, and only seen ATI cards in the lower end laptops like 8510p. Could you point out any models with ATI chips?

The 8710W models I know have either: NVIDIA Quadro FX 1600M (my version) or NVIDIA Quadro FX3600M.

But thanks for a good hint, it would indeed help if people would also report the gpu and cpu models (mine is Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 2.4GHz). The other models are T7500 and T9500.

Btw, it was verified, the problem with my computer wasn't fixed by changing the heatsink, apparently the gpu itself is faulty. It will be replaced on monday morning, i'll report more after that.

And as a footnote some general impressions of 8710W and HP after my 6 month experience (i used to be a fujitsu customer, HP is a new deal for me):

- the business onsite support is awesome at least here in finland, they are very quick and responsive. On the other hand the consumer support I accidentally called first was horrible.

- 8710W is a great workstation but some of the design flaws (such as the touch controls for volume etc) are horrible. The keyboard is hard to type with after getting used to writing with "lighter" laptop keyboards for years, I constantly make typos with 8710W because the keys need to be pressed further and harder than usually.

- When the hardware works, it works very well. If HP didn't have such great support I would have thrown 8710W out the window by now. Their responsive support is the main reason why I have the patience to wait for the faults in my 8710W copy to be fixed. When it will (some day) work without glitches, I will be extremely pleased with the laptop.

- The outer plastic body flexes a bit too much for my liking (thank god there is a metal frame inside like in the awesome Lenovo's), but it's just a cosmetic annoyance.

Generally I'd say 8710W is the best 17" laptop on the market currently for what I need: AutoCAD Architecture, Revit, Archicad, VIZ and Blender.

 

All my impressions, benchmarks and temperature readings are in my review of the latest revision for the 8710w with 3600M.
Basically, this is arguably one of the best built notebook on the market currently with a great keyboard (it is the optimal feel for a business keyboard, unlike other consumer offerings) and excellent hardware design (my unit is quiet and cool to the touch).

 

I suspected that HP would have problems with 8710w with FX3600M. FX3600M can consume 70W and I think that is too much for that type of laptop. Most other vendors has a dual cooling solution and in general bigger laptops for those power hungry cards. HP just tried to fit in the most powerful card into their existing line which wasn't really designed for it. Expect these problems to continue with this model.

 

I know that 8510w was being sold with either nVidia workstation gfx or with Ati model. Just checked the HP website though and it looks like they only do it with nVidia GPU. My bad then.

Anyway, nVidia gfx is usually working at quite high temps, so if there is a design problem with the fan/cooling system it will definately show up. I think on average they run at at least 65-75C in normal/idle mode. My Ati GPU can run as low as 20C!

 

My friend's 1600M is 50C when idle, and crixx had measured in his review for the 3600M to be 45-48 idle. NVIDIA's shouldn't run any hotter because they too (like ATI's) have stepdown features to lower power consumption when idle.

 

Dude, my HD2600 driver modded to V5600 heats up to 44C at max stress LOL So nVidia's idle temp for me is like beign fried on a desert

 

I still say those are the wrong temps!

 

LOL I don't care! as I can feel the difference between 40 and 60C
Some time ago I promissed doing the infrared gun/thermocouple test so next time I will be rendering sthing in SW I will try to do it.

 

More news:

On the second gpu cooler change and first gpu change, i had a deeper look into 8710W and found out the first two reasons why changing the gpu to a non-faulty one didn't help: the stock replacement parts from HP had horrible thermal paste on the gpu core, it was like a mixture of dry clay and sand. And this was an unused factory service part. So, I cleaned it all off from both CPU and GPU and replaced with silver thermal paste and saw a drop of 10C in cpu and 20c in gpu temperatures.

That didn't solve the fan problem though. After looking at CPUID monitor for some time, I think I figured it out: the monitor lists 6 ACPI sensors in addition to the two cores, one gpu and hdd temp. I have no idea where exactly the ACPU sensors (TZ0_ - TZ5_) are on the mobo or gpu, but I suspect they're the ram and chipset chips that are connected to the same heatpipe that comes from the gpu. I noticed that TZ2_ and TZ0_ were the hottest ones, and even though my cpu was now 45C and gpu 50C, the fan ran like crazy: propably trying to cool TZ2_ and TZ0_ which were running at 70C. I suspect the guilty ones are the ****ty looking cheapo thermal pads that have been slapped over the bridge chip, gpu ram chips and two other chips.

And, furthermore: I guess the 1600M model uses the same GPU cooler as the 3600M with the exception that 3600M has been fitted with the exactly same cooler but with an extra heatpipe (look at the attached pic of my unit). IMO we should all demand new coolers from HP with the extra heatpipe rail, as the price difference between the two is neglible compared to the price of the laptop as a whole, and the difference in having two heatpipes (as one is capable of cooling something as toasty as quadro 1600M + chipset) is really big. Trying to save in costs in such place is ridiculous at best.

 

What do you mean? They both (1600M vs 3600M models) have the same heatpipes. I really don't know what wrong with your unit, but several models I've seen so far are all whisper quiet unless they are doing demanding tasks. What power profile/OS are your running on?

 

Really? Then they must have saved the extra rail for a future model

I'm running Vista business 64bit, XP Pro and Fedora 9 with optimal power settings, they have no part in the fan noise issue. As I said earlier, it seems that as long as *any* of the temperatures seen on CPUID monitor are high, the fan will keep on cooling, and as two of the chipset chips seem to have a poor contact with the gpu rail, they stay hot and the fan will stay loud. I'll have to exchange the cheap looking thermal pads into something with a better contact.

Edit: Point proven. After a tighter fit of the cpu cooler to the chipset and ram chips and running 3dmark03 & stressing out the gpu with other tools, the cooler is now capable of bringing the temps down and the laptop is much more quiet.

Edit 2: The culprit narrowed down further: I'm using an extended size desktop on a second display via a HDMI cable. I noticed that whenever I unplugged the HDMI cable, the temperature of ACPI TZ5_ dropped from 70 to 30 and the fan went completely silent. When the HDMI cable was attached for ~20mins the temp of TZ5_ rose back to 70 and fan started humming loudly again. So, now i'll just have to find out which chip has TZ5_ and figure out how to cool it better.

 

piksi, if you're still reading the thread...

Have you been able to keep the noise down? I just got this laptop today and was initially really happy with everything, until I noticed that the fan isn't stopping at all. I guess the problem is similar to yours - some of the TZx_:s are constantly around 60-70 C. Is that fix something a person who doesn't know that much about hardware could do? Will it void the warranty or anything?

This is pretty ridiculous in my opinion, one of the very reasons I paid extra for a business laptop is that I thought I wouldn't have to deal with any nasty surprises. Sounds like it's pretty useless to try and get it fixed by HP either. I also expected this thing to last for a few years, but now I'm not too thrilled about the idea of listening to this vacuum cleaner any longer than I have to. I wonder what kind of return policies we have here in Finland - probably pretty hostile, of course...

 

There is no noise in mine. 8710w is a great machine. I think yours, people, are faulty. Get them fixed.

 

I've noticed that a few TZx_ raise to 70-80 C and when you stop running intensive apps the machine they stay there. The fan can run at max for a very long time after you run someing intensive. Sometimes it doesn't stop running at all even if we talking about 15 minutes after the app. Then you reboot the machine and the fan is at normal speed again.

 

At some stage we assumed this is a 'precaution' by HP as if you didn't notice the fan goes up to its max RPM when you turn the laptop on, just in case it was shut down after a crash and there might have been an overheating issue. But still, they just should get a better cooling system...

 

Contrary to several reports, the 8710 actually has a very well-designed cooling system. The unit is actually fine if you actually use it. It's cool and not noisy at all. To a certain extent, I'd say the cooling system is better than the 8510p/w models.

 

The fan goes at max during boot but for a very short time. I think it's even the BIOS itself which lowers the rpm for the fan. Then during driver initialization it goes to max again for a while and gradually goes back to normal. I'm not sure why, maybe the driver do a quick test of the fan during init. This does not however explain why the fan gets stuck at max at runtime.

 

Looks like it might be something like this for me too:

I've now spent half the day using this thing - running stuff like 3DMark and Maya - and it's been very quiet and the fan has always quickly slowed back down even after heavy load. But the minute I attached my external LCD (via VGA, forgot to buy a HDMI cable), it got noisy again.

Looking at the temperatures with Notebook Hardware Control, it looks like it's caused by TZ2_ (barely) crossing above 65 C, which is the threshold for higher fan speed according to NHC's ACPI Thermal Zone information -screen. I think TZ2_ is the GPU core, because the temperatures seem to be same. This kind of makes sense: the GPU gets a tad hotter when you give it twice the amount of pixels to process. Unfortunately that's just enough to push the fan from barely audible to vacuum cleaner. Perhaps a slight DSDT tweak could do the trick by moving the treshold slightly higher. Or just better cooling pads, but I'm worried about the warranty.

On another note, according to NHC, only TZ2_ and TZ0_ have effect on the fan speed, if I'm interpreting this correctly. I'm not sure what TZ0_ is. (The sensor names might of course vary with different versions and units, though. The names and symbols are inconsistent: for me, TZ0_ has a longer name "Thermal Zone #4" and TZ2_ is "Thermal Zone #0".)

So it looks like I'm going to be pretty happy with this after all, I just won't be using the external screen all that much. Thankfully there's plenty of space on WUXGA.

Edit: If anyone's interested in further details... After the GPU temperature crosses above 65 C the fan fires up to a noisier level, as mentioned above. The new treshold is apparently set to 55 C, meaning that the temperature needs to come down over 10 C before the fan stops spinning loudly. This might never even happen, so the fan just keeps spinning loudly for a long time. Anyway, this may not apply at all to the problems others are having, but I guess my point is that watching the numbers in NHC or somewhere can give some useful insights if you're having problems with the fans.

 

Miika: those numbers and sensor info correspond with my findings on the 8510p. I believe TZ0 is actually one of the Cores...and HP figured their temps are going to be roughly similar? I dunno. But yeah, TZ2 is definitely the GPU, as mine also impacts fan speed (40c, 50c, 65c, etc)

 

I have a more relaxed day at work so I will finally do the test using our lab thermocouples and infrared thermometer. Results to follow soon

 

The booting fan max speed is completely normal - it happens on practically every modern computer no matter if it's a cheap desktop or a high end laptop.

Yeah, I've been using my 8710W with the HDMI unattached for a couple of weeks now and it's functioning as expected: quiet and enjoyable to use. I'm still pissed of the fact that if I want to stretch Revit, AutoCAD or Blender on two screens, i'll have to work with a vacuum cleaner.

Same here, I found out the treshold to be 65C.

I'm not sure though if recompiling the tables will help, as with two screens it's already running at > 65C with the fan at high speed, lowering the speed might push the temp even higher and thus trigger the higher fan speed again. Actually, the easiest way to fix it would propably be getting a cooling rig that has the second heatpipe, but registering to HP self service (and finding out if they even use such solution in any of their models) for ordering parts isn't all that straightforward.

 

Hi Everyone, i fix the problem, the problem is with the Bios F-0C, i flash back to F0B and the fan now is fine.

i hope they release a new Bios to Fix this fan problem

 

I agree with this conclusion, because despite the computer gets cooled during idle after a session with heavy load, the fan never spins down. For me it seems like some temperatures gets stuck and never go down.

Now, how do you report this kind of problem to HP?

 

At least for me.... It's not, sorry. I agree with you for the "stuck fan" that never goes silent after it hits a certain treshold, BUT I already had this problem with F.0A, F.0B... And with a replaced mobo that was flashed to F.0B. I hoped F.0C would fix it (and it did *something* to the issue) but the fan still gets stuck at a certain speed after i've worked with HDMI or simply randomly.

Btw, an update: I might have mentioned in some earlier post but I got T-Globals good quality thermal pads with 4-5W/mK for free and replaced all the GPU sink thermal pads and the GPU core thermal paste with them. In addition I ordered a replacement gpu cooler because of the warranty (to be put in place in case of repairs). I yet have some 3Dmarks and other tests to run, but even on idle the gpu temp dropped another 5C compared to HP stock pads and paste.

I'll report more after stress testing.

 

Yeah.. I was thinking about some more creative hack, that is, not changing the actual fan speeds but the thresholds. What seems to be the biggest problem for me is that once the fan has fired up after briefly visiting 65C, it takes forever for the temperature to reach 55C where it would slow down again. If I could move the slowdown threshold up to, say, 60C instead of 55C, it would solve some of the more annoying problems because the fan would actually stop after heavy load. Don't know if that's possible or too difficult, though.

I do agree that replacing the thermal pads would be a better solution. I guess I'll have to open this thing anyway after a few months, when the fans have collected a nice thick layer of dust. That would probably be a good time to change the thermal pads too, if I haven't by then. Anyway, thanks for taking the trouble to report your experiences with them and please do keep on doing so.

 

After being so many times repaired by onsite they actually now seem to have replaced the entire laptop. This new one has exactly the same behaviour while hdmi/d-sub is connected. Damn this "feature" - perhaps working inside a fridge would help

Oh and my previous complaint of the keyboard - they seem to have adressed that in this newer revision of the system, feels like i have to use much less force when writing than before and i don't get so many misses than before. The flexing of the numpad has been adressed as well.

But as a recommendation to everyone considering buying 8710W - forget working with a second display unless you get kicks from vacuum cleaning sounds.

 

Your problem really does not exist in all the 8710w's I've tried (and you couldn't have tried as many as I had), which led me to believe it is only happening to older revisions/models since yours has the Merom chips (T7700) and Quadro 1600M card. Can you get HP to replace it with a Penryn model? You should experience significantly lower temperatures.

 

Yes this seems to have Merom. I would love to have Penryn but I doubt they simply would say "ok" if I asked "I want Penryn CPU because Merom runs hotter"